“Operators install two fewer mobile antennas per tract in lower income areas for equal distributions of subscribers,” the London business school says. That’s across the board, and it includes both urban and rural areas. So, it isn’t just a rural-divide issue, the researchers say.

When talking about subscribers, the school includes potential subscribers as subscribers, too.

Fewer base stations, lack of femtocells

On average, poorer areas had fewer regular base stations installed. That alone was a problem, but the group also identified a lack of femtocells in the impoverished regions compared to the wealthier areas.

Femtocells are small cell boosters that route calls along the customers’ own ISP data cables. The customer-installed router-sized device is helpful in areas that have poor service.

“Wealthier households in poorly covered areas were able to compensate for their signal loss by installing femtocell antennas,” a news release says. “Their poorer neighbors were not.”

The business school used a combination of crowdsourced data from six states pertaining to cellular coverage and femtocells, and they mashed it up with demographic income and population data.

“Base stations tend to be at least three times farther from lower-income subscribers,” the researcher say in their abstract.

Base stations are the traditional tower or mast that’s used to create mobile phone cells.

“Our results suggest that there is a mobile divide between individuals and households in affluent and lower-income areas,” says Dr Aija Leiponen, the study’s author, in the release.

That’s a problem for development in areas that need to see growth.

“Insufficient mobile coverage may further contribute to the decline or slower development of these areas,” Leiponen says. It hinders electronic-oriented health care, such as submitting health care applications, for example, the researchers say.

Interestingly, the study provides evidence that spotty service isn’t caused just by topography. It’s been easy, as we’ve become reliant on mobile devices as one travels around, to apportion blame for poor service to hills and mountains or distance from cities. That’s not entirely the case, this report suggests.

There are “other factors that influence whether people receive good mobile network coverage,” says Dr. Pantelis Koutroumpis, co-author of the study.